provide a vision

In every successful transformation effort that I have seen, the guiding coalition develops a picture of the future that is relatively easy to communicate and appeals to customers, stockholders, and employees. A vision always goes beyond the numbers that are typically found in five-year plans. A vision says something that helps clarify the direction in which an organization needs to move.... A useful rule of thumb: if you can’t communicate the vision to someone in five minutes or less and get a reaction that signifies both understanding and interest, you are not yet done with this phase of the transformation process.

John P. Kotter

"Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" Harvard Business Review. May-June 1995

keep fear at bay

It’s awfully hard for managers and staff to get motivated when they believe that the latest project from on high is going to die just like the last one - no matter what they do. Fear makes change intensely personal. People fear for their income. They worry about their families. They wonder what will happen to their careers. When people are afraid, they literally can’t hear or think as well. It’s much harder for them to take in important information when their minds are reeling. This can be a big distraction that undermines your team’s ability to focus and stay productive… just when you need to them most...

So how do the best leaders and managers mitigate change... fatigue, keep fear at bay and keep the team engaged and energized?

By doing two things: identifying and celebrating early successes and creating cultural experiences that support the vision and keep the change train on track.

Brent Gleeson

"1 Reason Why Most Change Management Efforts Fail" Forbes. Jul. 25, 2017

a solitary fantasy

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

Maya Angelou

"50 Inspiring Quotes on Leadership for Everyone" Time. July 1, 2015

what has changed with leadership in the past 50 years?

Very Little.

Tom Peters is a business and leadership legend widely known for his historical bestseller, In Search of Excellence, which has been called "the greatest business book of all time" by Bloomsbury Publishing.... 

In an interview with Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, Peters didn't mince words on the current state of leadership, saying that "nothing has changed in 50 years, including the maddening fact that all too often a business strategy is inspiring, but the execution mania is largely AWOL."

In his latest work, The Excellence Dividend, Peters collects everything he's learned in his 35-plus years of writing and speaking on the best practices for businesses and their leaders. He also puts the finger on the most common offenses people in management roles have made--and keep making. 

1. Inability to execute well.
2. Seeing 'excellence' strictly as long-term strategy.
3. Failure to develop a thriving culture.
4. Failure to put employees first.
5. Failure to listen.
6. Ignoring women as potential leaders and consumers

"Poor cross-functional coordination and communication is the principal element in the delay of everything," Peters says. If your organization's health is suffering due to internal conflict and too many obstacles in the way of progress, leaders aren't actively working together in a coordinated way to effectively execute.

How do you interpret excellence in leadership or business? Most leaders think "strategy," "planning" and "vision" are pathways to achieve excellence "out there." But Peters says managers fail to capitalize on immediate excellence--how we connect, listen, inspire, and admit mistakes on a human level to employees or customers. "Excellence is conventionally seen as a long-term aspiration. I disagree. Excellence is the next five minutes," says Peters.

"CEO job No. 1 is setting -- and micro-nourishing one day, one hour, one minute at a time -- an effective people-truly-first, innovate-or-die, excellence-or-bust corporate culture," Peters says. 

Peters says excellent customer experiences rely entirely on excellent employee experiences because it's the employee who makes or breaks the customer connection. This means leaders must see extreme value in them and pour into their career growth and development. "Training is any firm's single most important capital investment," adds Peters.

I've often written that effective communication isn't just about talking; it is also the ability to listen and understand what's happening on the other side of the fence. That's what great leaders do. "I always write 'LISTEN' on the back of my hand before a meeting," Peters says. 

On a more strategy level, Peters says "women buy everything" and make up a majority of consumer and business purchasing decisions, yet are largely underserved. But his conclusion hints at the underrepresentation of women in the C-suite: "One indicator of readiness to embrace this colossal women's market opportunity comes from conducting what I call a 'squint test.' One, look at a photograph of your exec team. Two, squint. Three: Does the composition of the team look more or less like the composition of the market you aim to serve?" Now there's a reality check.

Marcel Schwantes

"6 Things The Smartest Managers Already Know But Keep Getting Wrong" Inc.com. Oct. 8, 2018

the mere aspiration

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of mind, for the moment realizes itself.

Anna Jameson

Forty Thousand Sublime and Beautiful Thoughts Gathered from the Roses, Clover Blossoms, Geraniums, Violets, Morning-glories, and Pansies of Literature. Christian Herald. 1915

set a vision and connect the dots

It's vital that once-in-a-career leaders set a compelling, inspiring vision that focuses employees and encourages the expenditure of their discretionary energy. It should be a vision grounded in strategic objectives and the values of the company.

When you set such a vision, employees show up with conviction and are passionate about building something together that makes a difference in something that matters. In the absence of a compelling vision, employees can flounder. Think about yourself and what it's like to work in a place that has no clear, inspiring vision--you feel rudderless.

It's just as important that the vision is then consistently communicated and that the leader helps each employee understand what their unique role is in delivering the vision.

Scott Mautz

"Developing These 5 Habits Will Make You a Once-in-a-Career Leader to Employees" by Scott Mautz. Inc. Jun 19, 2018.

create meaning

Understand that meaning is what motivates employees in a manner that sustains. Foster meaning through actions such as being clear on the organization's purpose, encouraging each employee to define the legacy they want to leave behind, and by granting large swaths of autonomy. You also create meaning for employees when you invest in their personal growth and development and help foster their sense of competence and self-esteem.  

You can help your employees become better versions of themselves and in so doing become a better version of yourself.

Scott Mautz

"Developing These 5 Habits Will Make You a Once-in-a-Career Leader to Employees" by Scott Mautz. Inc. Jun 19, 2018.

what my job as CEO is not

The most powerful learnings for me in my journey as a CEO have been about what my job is not –

It is not my job to be a judge. My job is to give people the tools and visibility to assess themselves. People are fully capable of self-assessment and although I often give feedback, this is just an input which may or may not be relevant in the problem they are solving.

My job is not to problem solve. I have a natural love of problem solving so my natural instinct is to jump in and try to solve the problem. My true job is to make sure success is clearly defined and then hard as it is—step aside. One person has very limited experiences to draw from and we can only achieve success if everyone is problem solving together.

Phoebe Hayman

"Phoebe Hayman, the founder of Seedling, Talks About Leadership as a Support Role" by Ramon B. Nuez Jr. Huffington Post. August 28, 2017.

provide proof of life

If you are fortunate enough to be entrusted with leadership — that is, with imagination on others’ behalf — he is clear on what you are meant to do: “I am here to provide proof of life to that ever elusive, never completely believable ‘us.’”

I am here, in that line, is precondition for everything that happens after. Being there, in and of a place, is where leading begins. Then you must move. Songs need to get played, arenas to get filled up. But those are only means. A leader’s job is to embody identity for a community — to give words and flesh to elusive ideals. (Only inside a body does an ideal get to become a story.) A leader’s legitimacy, then, rests upon “how deeply you [can] inhabit your song.”

Gianpiero Petriglieri

"Bruce Springsteen, Artful Leadership, and What Rock Star Bosses Do". Harvard Business Review. 9/27/2017

a company's true north

“Vision is the dream,” says Weiner. “A company’s true north. It’s what inspires everyone day in and day out. It’s what you constantly need to be aspiring to.” He defines LinkedIn’s vision as “Creating economic opportunity for every professional," where 'professional' refers to every single one of the over 3.3 billion people in the global workforce.

The mission, on the other hand, defines how the company strives to fulfill that vision. For LinkedIn, that means “connecting the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.” Here the term ‘professional’ is all about the company’s immediate audience of more than 600 million knowledge workers in its network, and the opportunity to change their lives.

Visions aren’t immediately achievable. They’re pie in the sky ideals that may take generations, many partnerships, and many people to achieve — and even then, perhaps only in part. Missions, however, can be defined in terms of concrete objectives, and a company can be measured by how well it achieves them, Weiner says. Most companies, even startups, will only have one or the other. But a vision without reference to what the company actually does is unmoored from reality, and may not serve its purpose to inspire and organize employees.

Interview with Jeff Weiner, Linkedin CEO

"The Management Framework that Propelled LinkedIn to a $20 Billion Company" First Round Review. 8/2/2013

all plans fall apart on the first round

[Y]ou need to establish clear lines of trust and communication between you and your subordinates.

The rationale is actually quite simple: The moment the shooting starts and everything goes to shit, it becomes critically important that you understand your mission and its end-state.

“There’s an old adage, which is very true: that all plans fall apart on the first round fired and things start going to hell in a handbasket,” explains Smith. “If everybody understands what the real intent is, what the real purpose, the larger purpose of a particular action is, when shit goes to pot, people can be guided by what we’re really trying to accomplish instead of just doing exactly what they were told in the plan....”

“I would say that the more nebulous the environment the more important that everybody down to the lowest ranking private understands the larger purpose of every action, so as to be guided when things go to hell,” explains Smith.

James Clark

"6 Combat Leadership Tips From A Badass Marine General" Task & Purpose. 4/5/2016

Note: Marine Maj. Gen. Ray L. Smith is a tested and proven combat leader and a highly decorated Marine veteran with more than 33 years of service under his belt. He is a recipient of the Navy Cross, two Silver Star Medals, a Bronze Star Medal with Valor, and three Purple Hearts for injuries sustained in combat. Smith served in Vietnam, Grenada, and Beirut and has led men under fire and commanded troops at every level.

whatever a man does, he’s bound to take some risks

…in the late 1860’s… Papa and a bunch of other Salt Licks formed a “pool herd” of their little separate bunches of steers and trailed them to the new cattle market at Abilene, Kansas.

This was to get “cash money,” a thing that all Texans were short of in those years right after the Civil War. We lived then in a new country and a good one. As Papa pointed out the day the men talked over making the drive, we had plenty of grass, wood, and water. We had wild game for killing, fertile ground for growing bread corn, and the Indians had been put onto reservations with the return of U.S. soldiers to the Texas forts.

“In fact,” Papa wound up, “all we lack having a tight tail-hold on the world is a little cash money. And we can get that in Abilene.”

Well, the idea sounded good, but some of the men still hesitated. Abilene was better than six hundred miles north of the Texas hill country we lived in. It would take months for the men to make the drive and ride back home. And all that time the womenfolks and children of Salt Licks would be left in a wild frontier settlement to make out the best they could.

Still, they needed money, and they realized that whatever a man does, he’s bound to take some risks.


Fred Gipson
Old Yeller. Haper Collins. 1956.

a new perspective

While Kelly’s mission was primarily a stepping-stone for sending astronauts to Mars, he gained a new perspective on the Earth and the environment. From his view, Kelly was able to see the Earth’s climate in a new light – observing weather systems and pollution in a way he could never experience from Earth.

Intentionally stepping out of the typical day-to-day can help people see situations from a new – and often unexpected – perspective. Effective leaders recognize the benefit and learning that stems from these new perspectives. They are open to experiencing the bigger picture, so they can identify new barriers, challenges, contexts and opportunities.

Vanessa LoVerme Akhtar

"Leadership Lessons From Astronaut Scott Kelly" Forbes. 3/3/2016

the rainbow's treasure

You may grind their souls in the self-same mill,
And bind them heart and brow;
But the poet will follow the rainbow still,
And his brother will follow the plow.


John Boyle O'Reilly
Quoted in Unweaving The Rainbow by Richard Dawkins

quantifiable culture

Because culture is no longer a “soft” feature of organizational success, it must be measured quantifiably so change can occur if necessary. The right company culture drives employee engagement, which can be measured by employee’s beliefs that they feel connected, are able to execute on a high level, and can collaborate with those around them.... According to [Executive Leadership Coach] John [Mattone], just 15% of companies measure culture, while 70% measure employee engagement. In order to better align employees with culture, leaders must accurately measure both and ensure that they’re aligned. In his new book, John discusses five key “cultures” that determine a company’s operational success:

• Can-do culture: To what extent does your organization develop the inner-core values, beliefs and emotional make-up, and outer-core competencies and skills of employees that help the organization succeed?
• Will-do culture: To what extent is your organization’s vision, mission and purpose one that excites and motivates leaders and employees? Do employees truly believe that they can positively impact the business and add value to customers and society?
• Must-do culture: To what extent is there a clear vision and strategy for the organization? Do different parts and levels of the organization share the same vision?
• Individual culture: To what extent are leaders and employees true “role models”? Is there a culture of individual excellence and execution? Do employees “walk the talk”?
• Team culture: To what extent is there a team and collaborative approach to getting things done in the organization?

If organizations have these five engines operating at a high level, they will experience a strong culture that employees identify with, resulting in high operational success. 

Alyssa Drury

"Why a Strong Corporate Culture Requires Disruptive Leadership" BostInno. 2/3/2016

awakened leadership

Awakened leadership is reflective. When you reflect on things, you consider them from multiple angles, and think deeper about them than a superficial thought or two. Your job, position, work relationships, the industry you are involved in, the very purpose of your performance, your private or social connections, the things you say, the things you do, and those you refrain from saying and doing: reflecting on all of the above can help you understand yourself better, and make you more mindful from here onward....

Awakened leadership is the continued awareness in your thoughts, actions, and communications that: 

1. You have to make your decisions by reflecting on your lessons learned from past experiences, but even more by reflection on your wishes for the future and the possible effects these decisions will have on that. 
2. You should consider the perspectives of others, and keep an open mind to potentially different ideas, which as they may enrich your understanding, insight, and consequently, the directions you will choose going forward. 
3. You should question, even doubt, established patterns and procedures, as many of them were created when times, expectations, circumstances, goals, and mindsets, were entirely different. If you find that the old patterns and procedures still suffice, you can continue with them, but if you find that there is room for improvement or drastic change, you should implement that. 
4. You should keep in mind that, while details are important to safeguard quality in everything, you also have to keep the big picture in mind, so that you can focus on what really matters in the long run. 
5. You should make mindful leadership your new habit. Your mind is a wonderful instrument, but it has the tendency to lead you astray at every opportunity it gets. This is the time to step up in awareness and regain control over the directions your mind moves into. 

Restore your priorities in the right order, and realize the impermanence of everything, including yourself. If you can keep yourself mindful of the fact that you want to leave this world a better place than you encountered it, you have set an important step on the path to awakened leadership.

Joan F. Marques

"Awakened Leadership: A behavioral roadmap" HR.com. August 2015

CEO - the synthesis point

The CEO is a unique functioning role. He or she is the “synthesis point” where all vectors of the organization come together. “The CEO has the ability to look across the company and reinforce the vision.” Illuminating this path time and time again can be done on a range of scales. From holding coffee hours and book clubs to understanding the right time to sell the company, vision and long-term goals should be part of the constant conversation.

Drake Baer (presentation by Bazaarvoice CEO Brett Hurt)

"You Aren’t Born Knowing How to Be a CEO" First Round Review. 7/2/2013

missing a compelling future

During an interview on FOX Business Network’s Cavuto: Coast to Coast, entrepreneur Tony Robbins said America is lacking a vision.

“As corny as it sounds, everyone needs a compelling future,” he said. “Everybody needs something to move towards. If you don’t have something to move towards, you settle for where things are and you get upset with where things are.”

Robbins reflected on the history of the country and how, at different times, there were different types of visions held by American leaders.

“[President] Kennedy brought a vision…It’s like we’re going to go to the moon. In various stages people have visions… we’re going to bring back America. What’s our vision right now… to pay our bills?”

The entrepreneur and motivational speaker explained his approach to helping people.

“It’s not about being positive, it’s about being smart,” Robbins said. “When you’re in a lousy state you treat other people poorly, your family poorly, you perform poorly. When you’re in your best state, you’re going to use your capabilities more. But right now, we’re missing a compelling future. We’re missing somebody saying ‘this is what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.’”

Matthew Kazin

"Tony Robbins’ Tips For Getting Out of a ‘Funk’" FOXBusiness. 10/6/2015

a lone figure - a first follower

So how does a leader get the workforce to buy into their new vision? One speaker pointed to the YouTube video Leadership lessons from dancing guy, which shows a man dancing wildly on his own at a pop festival. Eventually, another man joins in and they dance eccentrically together. After a while, a couple more revelers join in and after a few minutes, there is a rush of people joining the dance.

The message is that a lone figure needs a first follower to join them in order to trigger a social movement. This is equally true in setting a new direction for a company. “What you need is someone who starts joining the lone nut – that’s when you get the flywheel effect and the movement gains momentum,” said the speaker.


Eva Eisenschimmel
"Inspiring leadership and the need for a creative, empowered workforce" The Guardian. 10/8/2015

you already have permission

Act: “You Already Have Permission”: This is a challenging guideline for many managers, because it means switching from direct control to a trust relationship with the members of the team. This allows entire teams to change and transform the product and the internal processes in a flexible way, to adapt to different goals and changing markets, and to be overall more innovative and competitive. Removing the worry of “I need to get authorization” from every aspect of the work can be challenging, but it rewards business and people’s health greatly.

This is embraced at multiple levels inside Automattic as a rule. While there is still a long term vision from the top, each person and team is left to decide what’s best for the work that has to be done. The goals of the organizations are collected and discussed, teams set their own roadmap, goals and milestones and individuals can start initiatives on their own...

What is important is to recognize that people will want to give feedback or add their own shape to the idea.

Rawn Shah

"5 Leadership Attitudes From Flat Organizations" Forbes. 11/5/2015